Meanwhile, Niestronno had been German, become Polish, become German again, then Polish again, and Stobski’s mother was seventy-five years old. The letter from Captain Hummel still lay in the closet that had long since ceased to contain any linen: Frau Stobski used it to store potatoes; behind the potatoes were a big ham and a china bowl full of eggs, and right at the back, in the darkness, a can of oil. Wood was stacked under the bed, and on the wall an oil lamp spread a reddish glow over the picture of the Madonna of Czestochowa. Back in the stable lolled a thin pig, there was no longer a cow, and the house was filled with the racket of the seven children of the Wolniaks, who had been bombed out of their home in Warsaw. And outside on the road they came trudging by: exhausted, footsore soldiers with pinched faces. They passed by almost every day. At first Wolniak had stood at the roadside, cursing, from time to time picking up a rock, even throwing it; but now he stayed back in his room, where Joseph Stobski had once repaired watches, engraved bracelets, and fiddled around in the evening with his little oily wheels.
In 1939 Polish prisoners of war had trudged past them toward the east, other Polish prisoners toward the west; later, Russian prisoners had trudged past them toward the west, and now for a long time German prisoners had been trudging past them toward the east, and although the nights were still cold and dark, and deep was the sleep of the people of Niestronno, they still woke up at night at the sound of the soft tramping on the roads.
Frau Stobski was one of the first to get up in the morning at Niestronno. She put a coat over her pale-green nightgown, lit the fire in the stove, poured oil into the little lamp in front of the Madonna’s picture, carried the ashes to the manure pile, fed the thin pig, then went back into her room to change for Mass. And one morning in April 1945 she found lying outside her front door a very young, fair-haired man with a faded haversack clutched firmly in both hands. Frau Stobski did not scream. She put down the black string bag in which she kept a Polish prayer book, a handkerchief, and a few fragments of thyme—she put down the bag on the window sill, bent down to the young man, and saw immediately that he was dead. Even now she did not scream. It was still dark, with just a faint yellow flicker behind the church windows, and Frau Stobski carefully removed the haversack from the dead man’s hands, the haversack that at one time had contained her son’s prayer book and a piece of hard sausage from one of her pigs. She dragged the boy inside onto the tiled floor, went into her room, taking along—as if absent-mindedly—the haversack, threw the haversack on the table, and searched through the bundle of dirty, almost worthless zloty bills. Then she set out for the village to rouse the gravedigger.
Later, after the boy had been buried, she found the haversack on her table, picked it up, hesitated—then went to look for a hammer and two nails, banged the nails into the wall, hung up the haversack, and decided to store her onions in it.
If she had only opened the haversack a little wider and raised the flap completely, she would have discovered on it the same number stamped in black ink as had appeared at the top of Captain Hummel’s letter.
But she never opened the haversack that wide.
CHRISTMAS NOT JUST ONCE A YEAR
I
Among our relatives, symptoms of disintegration are beginning to show up that for a while we tried silently to ignore but the threat of which we are now determined to face squarely. I do not yet dare use the word “collapse,” but the alarming facts are accumulating to the point where they represent a threat and compel me to speak of things that may sound strange to the ears of my contemporaries but whose reality no one can dispute. The mildew of decay has obtained a foothold under the thick, hard veneer of respectability, colonies of deadly parasites heralding the end of the integrity of an entire clan. Today we must regret having ignored the voice of our cousin Franz, who long ago began to draw attention to the terrible consequences of what was on the face of it a harmless event. This event was in itself so trivial that we are now shocked by the extent of its consequences. Franz warned us long ago. Unfortunately he lacked prestige in the family. He had chosen an occupation that had never before been pursued, would never have been permitted to be pursued, by any member of our entire clan: he became a boxer. Of a brooding melancholy even in his youth, and of a piety always described as “a pose of religious zeal,” he set out early on paths that caused my Uncle Franz—that kindest of men—deep concern. It was Franz’s wont to stay away from school with a frequency that could no longer be described as normal. He met regularly with shady characters in remote parks and dense undergrowth on the outskirts of town, where they practiced the tough rules of fistfighting, showing no concern for the fact that their humanistic heritage was being neglected. Already these young toughs were demonstrating the bad habits of their generation—one that has, needless to say, turned out to be good for nothing. The thrilling intellectual battles of previous centuries did not interest them, so totally were they preoccupied with the dubious thrills of their own century. At first, Franz’s piety struck me as being incompatible with these regular exercises in passive and active brutality. But today, certain things are beginning to dawn on me. I shall have to return to this later.
So it was Franz who issued a timely warning, who dissociated himself from certain celebrations, describing it all as affectation and a pain in the neck, above all later refusing to participate in measures deemed necessary to preserve what he called a pain in the neck. However—as I have said—his prestige was not high enough for him to find a hearing among his relatives.
But now things have got so out of hand that we are at a total loss, not knowing how to put a curb on them.
Franz has long since become a famous boxer, yet today he rejects the praise heaped upon him by the family with the same indifference with which he at one time refused to accept any criticism.
His brother, however, my cousin Johannes—a man for whom I would at any time have vouched, a successful attorney, my uncle’s favorite son—is said to have become involved with the Communist Party, a rumor I obstinately refuse to believe. My cousin Lucie, until now a normal woman, is said to spend her nights in disreputable places, accompanied by her helpless spouse, at dances for which I can find no other adjective than “existentialist.” Even Uncle Franz, that kindest of men, is supposed to have said that he is tired of life—a man who was regarded by the entire clan as a model of vitality and as a paragon of what we have been taught to call a Christian businessman.
Medical bills pile up; psychiatrists, psychologists, are called in. Only my Aunt Milla, who must be cited as the originator of all these phenomena, enjoys the best of health, smiles, is as well and cheerful as she has almost always been. Her bright, cheery manner is now, after our years of heartfelt concern for her well-being, slowly beginning to get on our nerves. For there was a crisis in her life that threatened to become alarming. This is where I will have to go into more detail.
II
It is simple enough with hindsight to discern the origin of a disquieting trend—and, strangely enough, it is only now, when I observe the situation pragmatically, that the things which have been occurring in the family for almost two years seem unusual.
It might have struck us earlier that something was not right. In fact, something wasn’t right, and if anything at all has ever been right—which I doubt—here things are occurring that fill me with horror. Throughout the family, Aunt Milla had always been known for her particular fondness for decorating the Christmas tree, a harmless if particular weakness that is fairly widespread in our Fatherland. Her weakness met with smiles all around, and the resistance displayed by Franz from his earliest youth to this “to-do” was always the object of vehement indignation, especially since Franz cut a disquieting figure anyway. He refused to help decorate the tree. Up to a certain point, all this took a normal course. My aunt had become accustomed to Franz’s staying away from the pre-Christmas preparations, even from the actual celebration, appearing only for Christmas dinner. It was no longer even discussed.
&
nbsp; At the risk of making myself unpopular, I must now mention a fact in defense of which I can only say that it really is one. During the years 1939 to 1945 there was a war on. In wartime there is a lot of singing, shooting, talking, fighting, starving, and dying—and bombs are dropped, all disagreeable things with which I have no intention of boring my contemporaries. I must merely mention them because the war had a bearing on the story I wish to tell. For the war was registered by my Aunt Milla merely as a force that began as early as Christmas 1939 to jeopardize her Christmas tree. Admittedly, her Christmas tree was unusually vulnerable.
The main attractions on my Aunt Milla’s Christmas tree were glass dwarfs holding a cork hammer in their uplifted arms with a bell-shaped anvil at their feet. Under the dwarfs’ feet, candles were affixed, and upon a certain temperature being reached, a hidden mechanism was set in motion, a hectic agitation was communicated to the dwarfs’ arms, with their cork hammers they flailed away like crazy at the bell-shaped anvils, thus, since they were about a dozen in number, producing a concerted elfin tinkling. Furthermore: from the tip of the Christmas tree hung a red-cheeked angel in a silvery dress, and at regular intervals the angel parted its lips to whisper “Peace,” and again, “Peace.” The mechanical secret of this angel, obstinately guarded, became known to me much later, although at the time I had the opportunity almost every week of admiring it. In addition, of course, my aunt’s Christmas tree was also bedecked with sugar rings, cookies, angel hair, marzipan figures, and—last but not least—silver tinsel; and I can still remember that properly attaching the various ornaments took a great deal of effort, requiring the participation of the entire family, so that on Christmas Eve frayed nerves cost us all our appetite, and the mood was then—as one says—dismal, except in the case of my cousin Franz, who, of course, had taken no part in these preparations and was the only one to enjoy the roast and the asparagus, the whipped cream and ice cream.
When we duly arrived, then, for a visit the day after Christmas, and risked the bold assumption that the secret of the talking angel was based on the same mechanism that caused certain dolls to say “Mama” or “Papa,” the only response was mocking laughter. Now it is easy to imagine that bombs falling close by posed an extreme hazard to such a vulnerable tree. There were terrible scenes when the dwarfs fell off the tree, and once even the angel toppled to the ground. My aunt was inconsolable. After every air raid she went to endless trouble to restore the tree completely and to maintain it at least over the Christmas holidays. But even in 1940 it was already a hopeless task. Again at the risk of making myself very unpopular, I must mention in passing that the number of air raids on our city was indeed considerable, to say nothing of their violence. At any rate, my aunt’s Christmas tree fell victim—the thread of my narrative forbids my mentioning other victims—to modern warfare; foreign ballistic experts temporarily snuffed out its existence.
We were all genuinely sorry for our aunt, who was a charming, gracious woman. We felt sorry that, after bitter struggles, endless arguments, after many tears and scenes, she had to agree to renounce her tree for the duration of the war.
Fortunately—or should I say unfortunately?—that was almost the only impact the war had on her. The shelter built by my uncle was bombproof; moreover, there was always an automobile ready to whisk my Aunt Milla away to areas where nothing was to be seen of the immediate effects of the war. Everything was done to spare her the sight of the appalling destruction. My two cousins were lucky enough not to have to do their war service in its most rigorous form. Johannes quickly joined his uncle’s business, which played a crucial role in supplying our city with vegetables. Moreover, he had a chronic gallbladder complaint. Franz, on the other hand, although he became a soldier, was entrusted only with guarding prisoners, an assignment he utilized to render himself unpopular with his military superiors—by treating Russians and Poles as human beings. In those days my cousin Lucie was still unmarried and helped in the business. One afternoon a week she did volunteer war work at a factory that embroidered swastikas. But this is not the place to enumerate the political sins of my relatives.
Anyway, all in all there was no lack of money or food or whatever was necessary for protection, and the only thing my aunt bitterly resented was having to give up her tree. My Uncle Franz, that kindest of men, spent almost fifty years acquiring considerable merit and profit by buying up oranges and lemons in tropical and subtropical countries and selling them with a suitable markup. During the war he expanded his business to include less valuable fruits and vegetables. But after the war the gratifying produce that was his main interest was once again available, and citrus fruit became the object of keenest interest at every level. At this point Uncle Franz succeeded in regaining his former influential position, and he was able to provide the population with the enjoyment of vitamins and himself with that of a respectable fortune.
But he was almost seventy and wanted to retire, to hand over the business to his son-in-law. That is when the event occurred which at the time we smiled at but which today seems to us to have been the cause of the whole wretched sequence of events.
My Aunt Milla started in about the Christmas tree again. That was harmless enough; even the perseverance with which she insisted that everything was to be “like in the old days” merely drew smiles from us. At first there was really no reason to take it all that seriously. Although the war had destroyed so much of which the restoration caused greater concern, why—we said to ourselves—deny a charming old lady this trifling pleasure?
Everyone knows how difficult it was at that time to obtain such things as butter and bacon. But even for my Uncle Franz, who enjoyed the best of connections, it was impossible in 1945 to obtain marzipan figures, chocolate rings, and candles. It was not until 1946 that all these things could be provided. Fortunately, a complete set of dwarfs and anvils as well as an angel had survived.
I well remember the day we were invited to my uncle’s home. It was in January 1947, and bitterly cold outside. But indoors it was warm, and there was no shortage of things to eat. And when the lights were put out, the candles lit, when the dwarfs began to hammer, the angel whispered “Peace,” and again, “Peace,” I felt transported back into an era that I had assumed to be past.
Nevertheless, this experience, although surprising, was not extraordinary. What was extraordinary was the experience I had three months later. My mother—it was now the middle of March—had sent me over to find out whether there was anything my Uncle Franz “could do”: she was looking for fruit. I strolled through the streets to the part of town where my uncle lived; the air was mild, it was dusk. All unsuspecting, I walked past overgrown piles of rubble and neglected parks and, opening the gate to my uncle’s garden, stopped, dumbfounded. In the quiet of the evening, the sound of singing was clearly audible, coming from my uncle’s living room. Singing is a good old German custom, and there are many songs about spring, but now I could clearly hear “Holy infant, so tender and mild …”
I must admit to being confused. Slowly I approached the house, waiting for the singing to end. The curtains were drawn shut; I bent down to the keyhole. At that moment the tinkling of the dwarfs’ bells reached my ear, and I could clearly hear the whispering of the angel. I didn’t have the courage to intrude, and walked slowly back home. In the family, my account produced general merriment. But it was not until Franz appeared and gave us the details that we found out what had happened.
Around Candlemas, the time when in our part of the country the Christmas trees are stripped and then thrown on the garbage pile, where they are picked up by good-for-nothing children to be dragged through ashes and other rubbish, and used for various games—it was around Candlemas that the terrible thing happened. When my cousin Johannes, on Candlemas Eve, after the tree had been lit for the last time, began to detach the dwarfs from their clips, my aunt, until then such a gentle soul, set up a pitiful wail, a wail so violent and sudden that my cousin was startled, and lost control over the gently
swaying tree. Then it happened: there was a tinkling and a ringing, dwarfs and bells, anvils and all-surmounting angel—everything crashed to the floor, and my aunt screamed.
She screamed for almost a week. Neurologists were summoned by telegram, psychiatrists came racing up in taxis—but all, even the most famous of them, left the house shrugging their shoulders, although also somewhat alarmed. None of them had been able to put a stop to that shrill, discordant concert. Only the strongest medication yielded a few hours of quiet; however, the dose of Luminal that can be given daily to a sixty-year-old woman without endangering her life is unfortunately rather small. But it is torture to have in the house a woman screaming at the top of her voice; by the second day the family was already totally distraught. Even the comforting words of the priest, who always celebrated Christmas Eve with the family, had no effect: my aunt screamed.
Franz made himself especially unpopular by suggesting a regular exorcism. The priest scolded him, the family was dismayed by his medieval views, and for a few weeks his reputation for brutality outweighed his reputation as a boxer.
Meanwhile everything was being tried to relieve my aunt of her condition. She refused food, did not speak, did not sleep; they tried cold water, hot foot-baths, hot and cold compresses, and the doctors searched through their reference works looking for a name for this neurosis, but could not find it.
And my aunt screamed. She went on screaming until my Uncle Franz—really the kindest of men—hit on the idea of setting up a new Christmas tree.
III
The idea was excellent, but its execution proved to be extremely difficult. By this time it was almost the middle of February, and it is fairly difficult to find an acceptable Christmas tree for sale at that time. The entire business world has long since shifted—with gratifying speed, by the way—to other things. Carnival is approaching: masks and pistols, cowboy hats and crazy headdresses for Czardas princesses fill the store windows where earlier one had been able to admire angels and angel hair, candles and Nativity scenes. The confectionery stores have long since moved their Christmas items back into their storerooms, whereas carnival crackers now adorn their windows. In any event, Christmas trees are not available at this time of year on the regular market.